While authorities continued to search Monday for a convicted murderer who escaped from Folsom Prison, a suspected accomplice was arrested in San Bernardino County. Lorenz Karlic, 30, a former inmate who once escaped from prison, was arrested at his home in Hesperia by San Bernardino County sheriff's deputies, according to Lt. Mike Yarborough, a prison spokesman. Investigators also continued searching for the wife of escaped convict Glen S.

Looking for a dramatic backdrop for a campaign commercial on crime fighting, state Sen. Tom Hayden was drawn last week to the towering stone walls of the legendary Folsom Prison. So was a representative from the state Department of Corrections, who tried to shoo Hayden and his entourage away. It seems the senator failed to obtain the proper permits for commercial filming.

OK, excuse me while I see how much sympathy I can work up for the inmates in California's prisons. Umm, yep, sorry -- not really feeling the love, guys. As you know, 30,000 or so unfairly incarcerated choirboys at several state prisons, including Pelican Bay and Folsom, began refusing to eat their meals Monday. They have a number of complaints ; at Pelican Bay, those mostly revolve around, as The Times' Paige St. John reported, “conditions in solitary confinement, where inmates may be held indefinitely without access to phone calls or rehabilitation programs, or outdoor exercise beyond a concrete pen.” But wait, there's more!

"The past three years," said Folsom Prison inmate Robert Darcy, "have been insanity here, quite frankly." Convicted of kidnaping and locked up in the California prison system since 1969, Darcy said a recent rash of violence has created warlike conditions at the 105-year-old prison, with gangs battling over turf and "lock-down" periods lasting weeks during which inmates are confined to cells and deprived of hot meals.

Barbara Sianez is one of the thousands of Californians marking time outside prison walls because a relative or friend is serving time inside. "I've always felt we're serving the sentence right along with the convicted," said Sianez, who is married to an inmate at Folsom Prison. "In some ways it's worse. My husband will tell you I have a harder road ahead than he does. He's got his bills paid. I have to juggle everything else and keep my sanity and my relationship together."

A Folsom prison inmate with a homemade knife took a female guard hostage Saturday, releasing her unharmed 10 hours later after lengthy talks with trained negotiators and members of his family. Corrections authorities ordered a daylong lockdown of the state's 33 prisons while a team of crisis negotiators worked to free Officer Sheila Mitchell, 45, a nine-year veteran. Inmate Michael David Watson, 41, wielding a 6-inch knife, took Mitchell from her dining room post about 7 a.m.

The telegram arrived June 2 telling Joe (Tony) Nieto that a Folsom Prison corrections officer had shot his son in the chest and killed him that day in a melee among Latino inmates. Nieto accepted the version in the telegram and a subsequent telephone call in which prison officials said 26-year-old Anthony Nieto was shot because he was making stabbing motions against another inmate.

A day after Democrats bashed him for protecting the rich from a tax increase, Republican Gov. Pete Wilson counterpunched Wednesday, choosing as a backdrop the gray stone walls of Folsom Prison to accuse Democratic budget writers of wanting to reduce sentences for rapists, robbers and burglars. It was the first time in recent years that a governor has gone to a prison to deliver a budget message.

He was known as Angry Bear, and the name seemed a fitting emblem for his turbulent life. Half Apache Indian, he was devoutly spiritual as a boy, taking solitary treks to sacred mountain peaks and embracing other traditions of his people. But along the way Anthony Nieto veered down a path toward trouble, and ran afoul of the law. In 1988, his brief life ended in Folsom State Prison.

Everyone agreed it was an unusual event--a group of former jurors gathering for lunch to meet and toast the man to whom they had given a second chance in life. For Rami K. Darwiche, who spent seven years in prison for a 1981 murder he claims he did not commit, it was a chance to personally thank the jury that acquitted him Tuesday at the end of his second trial. The mood was festive.